Category: music

When the CEO of the Lousiville Orchestra paused in the middle of negotiating a new contract with the orchestra’s musicians last month to speculate publicly that the organization might shut down if serious changes did not occur, the musicians were stunned, and then furious. This week, they offered to take a wage freeze and benefit cuts and to submit the whole contract to mediation. But CEO Scott Provancher isn’t hopeful that mediation will accomplish anything, and he remains convinced that only a wholesale reduction in the number of full-time musicians in the orchestra can save the company from Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

“The New York Philharmonic, not known for its quick-stepping ways, is entering the new world of digital downloading under a three-year recording deal with Deutsche Grammophon… [The record company,] using live recordings by the orchestra, will release four concerts a year, probably through iTunes and perhaps through other Web sites.” The full concerts will cost $8 to $10, and listeners will also have the option of downloading individual pieces. The new deal was made possible when the Philharmonic musicians agreed to a revenue-sharing deal, rather than insisting on being paid a flat fee up front for the project, as has always been traditional.

Building an orchestral season without a music director is always a challenge, but the Chicago Symphony is hoping an unconventional approach to the challenge will engage audiences. “The season, built around an innovative tie-in to Yo-Yo Ma’s ongoing Silk Road Project, is jammed with more than two dozen visiting conductors,” some of whom are undoubtedly candidates to succeed the outgoing Daniel Barenboim at the helm of the CSO.

The new Chicago Symphony season seems to have veered in a decidedly populist (read: anti-Barenboim) direction, says John van Rhein. “There will be a conspicuous drop in the kind of rigorous modernist programming Barenboim favored — no Schoenberg, no Elliott Carter.” Behind the change in tone is CSO President Deborah Card, “[whose] primary mandate is building up an audience that has fallen somewhat during the Barenboim years. And so her administration continues to stress consumer-friendly initiatives such as Classic Encounters and the popular Friday-night film series.”

Conductor Leonard Slatkin, composer William Bolcom, and an orchestra from the University of Michigan were the big winners among classical nominees at the Grammy Awards last night. Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony took home the award for best orchestral performance, and the Emerson Quartet’s complete set of Mendelssohn quartets won best chamber music performance. In the jazz division, major awards went to Wayne Shorter, Pat Metheny, and Sonny Rollins.

The New York Philharmonic is back in the recordinjg business. The orchestra has announced “an agreement with New World Records to issue two CD recordings per year of live performances of contemporary American repertoire.”

The ambitious online venture Andante.com may have lost its battle to drag the world of classical music into the digital age last week, but Anne Midgette says that there is plenty of reason to believe that the war will eventually be won. “Classical music is thriving on the Internet. It is just that, like many other things on the Internet, it is not thriving in the form people in the 1990’s or early 2000’s expected it to take.”

The feuding members of the Audubon Quartet have finally reached a settlement in their years-long dispute which racked up $1.5 million in legal fees and cost two members of the group their home and (briefly) their instruments. According to the terms of the settlement, the aggrieved former first violinist will receive $500,000 from the other three members of the group. All parties will cover their own legal fees.

“Eight months after the abrupt departure of its former president and CEO, Simon Woods, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has put its search for a new leader on hold… The orchestra’s search committee, having received credible feedback that it might be overselling the position and understating its problems, has suspended the search until the end of the month. During that time, it will develop a three-year plan meant to show it understands its issues and has a concrete strategy for the future.”

Orchestras often try to apply overarching themes to their seasons, but the Los Angeles Philharmonic is taking the idea a step beyond the conventional with its 2006-07 season. “With the U.S. premiere of a new oratorio and a series of concerts devoted to music composed under Josef Stalin, the Los Angeles Philharmonic will tackle issues of art versus politics” and focus on composers under duress from oppressive regimes.